Civic*Celerator participant and coder Joseph Heaukulani at right discussing an app.

“Thanks to Civic*Celerator, we learned a great deal more about the influence of money in politics than we would have otherwise. With the collaboration of coders, students, volunteers, and random citizens like me, we were able to explore different parts of the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission data by breaking off into different groups, and trying to answer different questions that we had. For many of us, this was our first look at campaign spending data and we really didn’t know what we’d find.

In contrast with a normal weekend hackathon, Civic*Celerator gave us the ability to play with the data over an extended period of time which was extremely helpful. The meetups allowed us to compare notes and check in on each other’s progress. Finally, months of effort culminated in the Civic*Celerator Demo Day, in front of wider audience, with all the groups taking turns sharing what they were able to learn from the data and the app they built to interact with it.

Through this collaborative, citizen-driven, slow-simmered process, we were able to turn columns and rows of text and numbers from the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission into interactive, visual applications, allowing us to drill down into different areas of the data in a user friendly fashion and easily see how money flows through our political system.”

Civic*Celerator apps are not just for the election, it can also be a useful tool during the legislative session (Opening Day at the Hawaii State Legislature is January 21, 2015). Check out Common Cause Hawaii’s website to learn more about how to use these apps to help track money’s influence on politics.

Voqal Fund, co-sponsor of Civic*Celerator recently posted a summary of the project on their website. It includes some interesting statistics on the usage of the apps. Learn more about Voqal Fund and check out the write up here.

Check out a blog post on Civic*Celerator by Common Cause Hawaii Project Coordinator, Corie Tanida. In the short post she recaps the project and explains some of the impacts the project had on the community. Comments are welcome!

Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers, and lead developers Royce Jones and Jason Axelson, the Power Ballot, a feature of the Precinct Maps App, keeps improving. So much so, it was recently profiled in Civil Beat. Be sure to check out the profile and try out the enhancements to the Power Ballot for yourself.

Royce Jones has just released the General Election Power Ballot. This interactive ballot not only allows you to find information on candidates, but also ballot initiatives in one convenient location. Try it for yourself and help us spread the word about this great resource.

#ICYMI Check out Ryan Ozawa’s article in Civil Beat on the Developers of some of the Civic*Celerator apps. Learn more about the origins of these apps from Ben Trevino, Jason Axelson, and Royce Jones. Click here for article.